This is not a poem. This is the truth.
I don’t have anything but this dress,
and even this I borrowed.
I hate this red, arrogant dress -
all the wrong people look at it.
This dress is not the crimson of valentines,
it is the hot red of humiliation.
Freezer-burned strawberry
(not a sunsweet tomato.)
If beautiful is what this dress makes me,
I want festering ugliness.
